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Kibbe on Liberty
Ep 361 | The Media Is Dishonest About Guns | Guest: John Lott
01:03:02
John Lott, founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, sits down with Matt Kibbe to tell the real truth about guns and gun owners.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm talking with John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research center and we're going to talk about gun control. We're going to talk about how the media lies to you about crime statistics and why it is that gun free zones make your children less safe. Check it out. Welcome to kibby on liberty. John, good to see you.
- [00:56]
B
It's great to see you again. I appreciate you having me here. Thank you.
- [01:00]
A
We've been trying to get together since April. I went back and looked at the text conversation we've been having and I definitely want to talk about a piece that you wrote all the way back in April that I don't think got nearly enough attention about the Tulsi Gabbard release of the Biden administration anti terrorism memo. But you're in the area because we spent the weekend with one of our favorite congressmen, Thomas Massie.
- [01:29]
B
Right.
- [01:30]
A
Who got remarried, who's a beautiful event. And I'm still watching all of the anti Massey bots pick on him today. It's funny how obvious it is the campaign against him, but I think, yeah.
- [01:49]
B
I mean I put up a post on it and I immediately had haters kind of comment on it type of thing. Right. You know, Thomas, I guess anytime you kind of stand out and take a stand on things, you're going to have people who are going to go after you on it. But I'm sure he understands there are more people who support him. I know in 2020 Trump had endorsed his opponent in the primary and that held Thomas down to only I guess like 86% of the vote in the primary. So. I know, I know. So, you know, I suppose nothing's as exhilarating being shot at and missed. But that shot wasn't even close. So I don't know, we'll see what happens in this next primary. It looks like they're making even more concerted effort against him this time. But I mean Thomas and I have written 22 op eds together so you know, it's. And I've helped him on a few others.
- [02:48]
A
So you kind of serve as, as his go to think tank on a lot of issues, but particularly gun control type issues.
- [02:59]
B
Right. Well, I mean I'm an economist by training so I know more than just crime type stuff and we talk about that. But yeah, no, I mean, I'm just appreciative of the fact that he's willing to take the slings and arrows to do this and to go and put it out. So I think he's made A real difference in terms of the debate. He's co chair now of the second Amendment Caucus and you know, he has a visibility and able to get information out. We just had a piece, one of the couple most recent pieces we had was in the Wall Street Journal after the Minneapolis school shooting there. And I think it was a particularly important piece because the media bias has such an impact on the gun ownership debate. In that case, as in so many others, the murderer there explicitly explained why he picked the target that he did. The media says would read his manifesto and they'd say he's talking about these other school shooters or other mass murderers and but they don't say what he, why he talked about them and what he learned from them. What he learned from them in his mind was to go to a gun free zone. To me that seems newsworthy to know why the guy picked the target that he did. And not only did he pick the target because it was a gun free zone, even the time of day for the attack, he didn't want to go in the morning when parents were dropping off kids at school school or, or when they're picking him up because he was worried that there might be a parent with a permanently concealed handgun that might make his attack more difficult. And my guess is the whole gun control debate that we have right now would be, have been very different if even once in a while the media would say we've had, you know, yet another mass murderer where in his diary he says he picked the, this target because the victims weren't able to defend themselves. You know, it's, there's a commonality in that one and so many others where they go after they want to commit suicide, but they want to go and do it in a way they'll get the media attention. And they know the more people they kill, the more media attention they're going to be able to get. And they know if they go to a place where their victims can't defend themselves, they're going to be able to go and kill more people and get more media attention. We don't need to get rid of the first Amendment. Okay. I'm not even sure how one would rewrite it in any way but, but you can, if you can take away their goal, their belief that they're going to be able to go and get media attention because you're going to be able to stop them quickly. So rather than having a sign in front of a school that says the school is a gun free zone, have a sign in front of the school that Says select teachers and staff at the school are carrying concealed and we'll use them to go and stop the attackers. We have over 14,000 public schools in the United States that have armed teachers and staff. Some of them have had them for decades. There's not been one single attack in a school where any teachers or staff have carried where anybody's been wounded or killed. All the attacks have occurred in places where they're banned from carrying guns.
- [06:26]
A
Why do you think it's so controversial? I mean, I realize anything about guns is fundamentally argued from a point of view of emotion instead of facts and logic, but at this point, the evidence is so obvious that gun free zones are dangerous.
- [06:46]
B
Right. They actually attract the killers.
- [06:49]
A
Yeah. So why is that controversial?
- [06:52]
B
Well, I'm not sure most people even know the facts on that, and that's up to the media. Lots of times years ago, I would be talking to editors at Fox News and I would say, you know, you guys come out with these stories which will say immediately the type of gun they thought was used or how they think the person obtained the gun. Often those initial news reports would be wrong. But you never, even on Fox, you would never have a news story kind of in the news cycle there that would go and say, we've had yet another mass public shooting in a place where guns are banned. Or, you know, as I was just saying, even when they'd start talking about the diaries and manifestos, they wouldn't say what the killer themselves said. So in the Minneapolis case, they said, well, maybe he did it because his mom used to work at the church there. Well, it's possible, but that's not what he talked about in the thing there. And so I think it's just the fact that people have no clue, you know, and it's biases in other ways. So, you know, people, Obama and Biden and others will go and say the United States is unique in terms of mass public shootings. That's simply wrong. I mean, I can understand why the media covers an attack in the United States more than they cover an attack someplace else that occurs. But we're not even in the top 50 in per capita rates that are there. You know, you take something like school shootings. The United States since 2000 has had nine mass public school shootings where four more people have been killed. And you compare it to a country like Germany, which has had three. Well, okay, in any other type of crime context, they put it in per capita terms, nobody's going to compare the number of murders in California with D.C. or something like that. And with when you look at this, what you find is that Germany has like 83 million people. We have 340 million people. So it's like less than one fourth. So if you adjust, that'd be the equivalent of us having over 12. You have a country like Finland which said two mass public school shootings over that period of time. They have 5.5 million people. That's like 1 60th. You know, that'd be the equivalent of us having over 120. You know, Norway's had one, but they have five and a half million people too. So. And that's just Western Europe. You know, I often will go to people and I'll say, okay, since 2010, name me the two worst mass public shootings just between Western Europe and the United States, almost everybody thinks they're in the United States. The Norway killer in 2011, he ignoring the bombing deaths, he shot to that 67 people. The Paris concert shooting in late 2015. 130 people killed. You get outside of Western Europe and there are lots of big mass public shootings that have occurred. But most people, you know, when something like that happens in another country, it may, may get a very brief mention if anything, and then it's off the pages. It's not like weeks of things. The other thing is the media just refuses to cover cases where civilians with concealed carry have stopped attacks. On our website@crimeresearch.org Since 2020, we have like 50 cases where police have said if it hadn't been for the presence of a concealed carry permit holder, it would have been a mass public shooting. Just over the last dozen years or so, there's so many cases you have the pulse. Nightclub shooting people know about at the time, it was the worst mass public shooting in the United States. It was getting coverage for months afterwards. The weekend after that, just one week later, there was an attack at a nightclub in South Carolina. Three people were shot. A fourth person was being shot at. When a permit holder pulled out his permit concealed handgun and seriously wounded the attack or ending the attack got like no coverage outside of local media coverage. What's the difference? Florida was one of 10 states that banned people being able to carry permanently concealed handguns in places that get more than half of their revenue from alcohol. South Carolina was one of the 40 states that allowed it. When the attacker in South Carolina was killed, he still had like 125 rounds of ammunition on him when he was stopped. If he wasn't there, can you imagine the international news coverage it would have gotten, you would think, just out of the sensitivity that they just had this attack at another nightclub, and it turned out so differently. There would be some national interest. You know, take the parklands shooting. Everybody knows about that. It was getting coverage for years afterwards. A couple months afterwards, there was an attack in an elementary school not far away in Titusville, Florida. The difference was it was at a park right next to the school, had hundreds of students there, parents, teachers. A man came up, started firing his gun, but because it was in a park, there was somebody with a permanently concealed handgun that was there, shot the attacker, seriously wounded him, ending the attack. Just local news coverage. Could you imagine the sensitivity and the national and international coverage if he hadn't been there, if it had been inside the school and nobody had been allowed to carry there? And so, you know, whether it's how they cover the manifestos or whether it. Just mentioning, you know, we've had yet another mass murder where people weren't allowed to protect themselves or, you know, not covering cases where civilians stop these attacks. All those things affect the point that you're asking about, you know, why do people have these views that they do, and it's just that they don't know about any of this other stuff that's there. I don't blame them if they constantly only hear about bad things that happen with guns and never hear about the benefits, you know, what else do you expect them to do than have those types of views?
- [13:40]
A
Thank you for joining me today on.
- [13:42]
C
Kibbe on Liberty and for being part of our fiercely independent audience. Every week, my organization, Free the People, partners with BlazeTV to bring you this show. My guests bring smart perspectives on everything from crime, current events, to timeless philosophical debates. If you like what you hear, go to freethepeople.org kol and support Kibbe on Liberty so we can continue to produce these honest conversations with interesting people. Now, let's get back to it.
- [14:12]
A
Yeah. When it comes to freedom, and I learned this the hard way during lockdowns, when they can tap into our fear and our emotions, they that the government is able to strip away our rights. And it strikes me that there's a twofold problem when it comes to rational gun policy. One is the emotionalism and the genuine fear for your own kids at school. But it also strikes me that this orchestrated media campaign is really about gun control. They're building a narrative again and again and again that tells us that it's, you know, guns are the problem, and if we just take away more guns, everything's Going to be fine. What do you do? So it's interesting because I find it particularly frustrating, all these, all these young men accused of assassination, attempted assassination, the school shootings. The manifestos are never made public.
- [15:20]
B
They are. It's just there have been a couple of selective cases. In particular the Nashville school shooter, mainly because the woman there was trans. But they come out and the media, you know, appears to have read them. They just don't do a very good job. Now there have been others which have been suppressed, like the mosque shooter in New Zealand. I actually got banned on Twitter for a while and had Facebook issues because the narrative there was this guy was a right winger and you read the manifesto there and you know, the guy saying his ideal form of government is communist China. He calls himself a socialist. He, he hated Muslims because he was an environmentalist and figured people who were having children were damaging the environment, immigrants were having too many kids. And I don't know, maybe I live a very isolated life, but I don't. At least conservatives or right wingers that I associate with normally don't go and say communist China is their ideal form of government. And they don't usually get upset about people having children.
- [16:39]
A
Yeah.
- [16:40]
B
And, and so I had tweeted that out immediately, got my account blocked and told that I needed to take it down and apologize for doing that.
- [16:54]
A
What year was this again?
- [16:56]
B
This was right when the attack occurred. I. I can't remember.
- [16:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, but it just, it's old Twitter, not.
- [17:02]
B
Right. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.
- [17:04]
A
Yeah.
- [17:04]
B
And. And then the funny thing was I wrote an op ed in, in the New York Daily News, which is hardly kind of a conservative right wing place. And I was fortunate that they ran it and actually ran two of my pieces. And so then our Crime Prevention Research center accounts tweeted that out and that was banned because I was just, you know, tweeting out. And, you know, it's not like the New York Daily News just took my word for it on what was in the manifesto. You know, they wanted to check it and stuff. And you know, you see, anyway, it just. So you know, that was another example where they just put blockades on people being able to go and see these. But most of the stuff, most of the shooters, you're going to get the diaries and manifestos that are out there. And you know, the Trump administration isn't trying to restrict them, like what you would seen during Biden if it was some type of protected group, like trans.
- [18:13]
A
Yeah. So you, you served in the Trump administration. I didn't realize that until just recently, what did you do at the Justice Department? Right, right, right.
- [18:23]
B
So my title was senior advisor for Research and Statistics in both the Office of Justice programs, which is kind of the statistical arm and gives out grants and other things, and then the Office of Legal Policy. And so I. I was involved in a number of things, trying to look at the errors and the NICS background check system. Something talked about Thomas Massie earlier, something that he's been very interested in. You know, you see in any given year, you'll see anything from like, 125,000, even 200,000 denials that are there from the Knicks. And it's so. And, you know, maybe 4 million overall, and it's sold as the, you know, Obama or Biden will talk about. You know, we've stopped dangerous, prohibited people from getting guns. That's simply false. What they should say is that there have been that many initial denials, but almost all those are false positives. So if you have 125,000 denials, they only prosecute, like, 20 people and get, like, 12 convictions. These are like the simplest cases in the world. I mean, you have somebody who signed a form under penalty of. Of perjury to say that, you know, I wasn't a felon. I didn't spend five years in jail, okay? And he had to show his id. You very frequently have him on video when they're doing this. It's like, as I say, the simplest case in the world to prosecute. And yet why are they only doing 20 prosecutions out of, you know, 125,000? And the simple reason is they're not real cases. You know, when you go and you buy a gun and you fill out the 4,000, 473, you're putting in all this information. Your name, your address, your birthday, your Social Security number, your race, your eye color. You think the government's using all that information? What they usually use is just roughly phonetically similar names and similar birthdays. You know, if private companies had an error rate that was 100th the error rate that the federal government does under federal law, they'd be sued out of existence. Okay? And the thing is, you know, Democrats claim that they care about minorities and the poor, but who do you think is being stopped? The thing is, people tend to have names similar to others in their racial groups. Hispanics have names similar to other Hispanics. Blacks tend to have names similar other blacks. About 34% of blacks are fellow males. Black males are felons. About 18% of Hispanic males are felons, about 6.5% of white males are felons, and about 1 1/2% percent of Asian males are felons. So you're most likely to get mistakes where you have similar names and roughly similar birthdays for black and Hispanic males. And so one of my tasks was when I went there, I explained this to the Bureau of Justice, and they were interested. I could tell you war stories, but the FBI just basically stonewalled us for getting the data. And then the other thing, I maybe had about a half dozen major projects, but one of the other big ones that I was working on was the FBI active shooting reports. Active shooting cases are ones where guns fired in public, not part of some other type of crime, like a gang fight over drug, turf or robbery. Anything from one person being shot at and missed all the way up to a mass public shooting. And the FBI puts out these reports yearly. And I could tell immediately looking at it, and I looked at it some, even before I got to the Department of Justice, that they were missing cases, a lot of cases where civilians had stopped these attacks. And, you know, it's one thing to make mistakes, and, and it's not like the police go and collect this data. The FBI has spent literally millions and millions of dollars paying researchers outside the FBI to collect this data. And. But even when you show them that they've missed cases and they systematically miss cases where civilians stop these attacks. So over the 11 years from 2014 through 2024, now they claim out of 300 and some active shooting cases over that period of time, they claim that 14 of them, about 4%, were stopped by legally permitted civilians. I think it's over 200 plus. They misclassify some cases as a civilian, they classify as a security guard. And so rather than about 4%, I think it's about 36%. And, and even when you could get them to go and admit that they've missed something, years later, they still haven't fixed it. So, I mean, it's one thing to make mistake. If somebody points it out to you, you should fix it. And if you even admit it and you still don't fix it, you know, that's troublesome.
- [23:43]
A
Yeah, it seems. I mean, maybe you don't want to say this, but it seems like they have a narrative and they're using selective data to reinforce their narrative at the expense of the truth, which in this case is that armed civilians keep us safer.
- [24:03]
B
Right. Well, you know, these reports, this data from the FBI is used in legislative debates. It's used in Court cases, it's used in media discussions. I can't tell you the number of media stories which say, well, the FBI proves that civilians rarely stop these attacks. And one of the debates I had with them was not just, you know, this 4% versus 36%, but that what you had to do is separate out these gun free zones that we were talking about before. Because you can't expect a law abiding citizen to go and stop an attack in a place where they're legally banned from having a gun. And if you do that, you in fact find that they stop over half of these attacks. And the problem is the data problems have gotten worse over time. During the last two years, the FBI claims that there is not one single case in the United States where legally armed civilians stopped an active shooting case. So in 2024, rather than their 0%, I think it's 48%. And I think if you exclude gun free zones and just look at places where they're legally allowed to carry, I think they stopped 63% of the attacks that are there. And one interesting study that we've just done recently was to kind of do a deep dive in these active shooting cases over the last 11 years from 2014 through 2024. And what we found was that civilians actually stopped more of these attacks than police did. And what people don't understand what an incredibly difficult job a uniformed police officer has in stopping these attacks. So if you're going to be a shooter who's going to go into a mall or someplace else and start shooting at people, if you see a police officer there, how does that in uniform so you can identify them, how does that change your strategy? Well, you can either then wait for the officer to leave, or you can move on to another target yourself. Or if you're going to insist on attacking there, who do you, you take out first? You take out the police officer. In fact, what we found is that even though the police stop fewer of these attacks than civilians do, police were seven times more likely to get killed in these active shooting attacks than a civilian is. It's kind of like having a neon sign above them when they're in uniform saying shoot me first. And so, you know, plus the other thing is we just don't have that many police. We have 650,000 police in the United States. No more than a third are on duty at any point in time. So you have 220,000 police that are responsible for protecting 340 million people. By contrast, we have about 21.5 million concealed carry permit holders in the United States. And we have 29 constitutional carry states where it's not even necessary now over the last few years in particular for people to go and carry, you know, to carry a permit to carry. And so you just have a lot more coverage that's there. And you don't have these tactical disadvantages that somebody in uniform faces.
- [27:28]
A
I started thinking about this. I was red pilled by the concert shooting in Paris that you referenced earlier at the theater. And I don't know exactly what the gun laws are in Paris, but I can imagine that they're radically restrictive. And certainly in a, in a concert.
- [27:48]
B
Police were, prior to that concert shooting, police were banned from carrying guns off duty there. There were eight police officers who were present. They changed it. So at least off duty police are able to go and carry now. But you can imagine how something like that might have turned out differently if they had allowed him to carry. But of course, civilians just generally you have to go through psychological screening tests. Basically semiautomatics are banned there in the country. It can take thousands of dollars to go through the process over a year to go and get your permit to be able to go and carry. One of the ironies is with all the debate that we have about silencers here, you're basically not allowed to hunt in France without having a silencer on your gun. But anyway, go ahead.
- [28:38]
A
Oh, noise. Noise pollution. Right. But thinking about it as an economist, I discovered at Thomas Massie's wedding that you had actually gone to school with one of my professors at ucla, Jack Kai. So when I think about, I think about economics very much from an Austrian perspective. And when I was thinking about safety in response to this theater shoot, I go to a lot of concerts. So I was particularly triggered by that event and the inability of people to defend themselves. If you have an unpredictable, decentralized threat, it could be a crazy guy, it could be a terrorist. Having a centralized, top down police force is woefully inadequate when it comes to defense. So I just think about it in a very decentralized, local knowledge kind of way. I would very much trust my neighbor to defend me more than I would expect the police to be there when I needed them.
- [29:44]
B
Well, it's just a lot more neighbors.
- [29:47]
A
Yeah.
- [29:47]
B
Than there are the Smiths.
- [29:48]
A
Yeah.
- [29:49]
B
You know, the other thing is, and.
- [29:51]
A
By the way, they might, they might be more interested.
- [29:54]
B
Right.
- [29:54]
A
Well, keeping me safe.
- [29:55]
B
Yeah. I was just going to get to a related point to that and that is, you know, you have things like the Uvalde School shooting or the Parkland school shooting where you had officers around over some period of time, but they weren't able to go in. You know, we all want to think we're heroes, going to be heroes when arrives. But it's one thing to kind of run towards gunfire. It's another thing when the gunfire is coming at you. And so, you know, if you have a teacher or staff member in the school there, you know, and the person's coming in, they have no choice, but, you know, if they go and hide behind their desk, they're going to get killed likely eventually. And so whereas, you know, in Parkland and the guy just refused to go into the building that's there. Even when other sheriff's deputies came up, they hid behind the car at Uvalde. You know, they could hear the shots going out, they could hear little girls calling them up on the phone and you know, and then the killer would hear them talking and they just were outside there and they were worried about their safety and I understand their concern about that. So, you know, as I think I mentioned before, we, we have public schools around the country that have allow teachers and staff to carry. And that's been a big change. I mean, when I first wrote a piece back in like 98 or so or about Gunfre's zones and schools, there was like no one that allowed him to carry at that point. And now, and now we have 30 states that to differing degrees allow it. Most of them require either the school board or the principal or superintendent to make a decision. You have a few states like Utah and Wyoming and New Hampshire that any teacher or staff member who has a concealed career permits allowed to carry. But you know, kind of your earlier comments about the emotion. I've testified and I only testify when I'm asked by legislators to do so. But you know, and I've read a lot of testimony and so much of the gun control debate is about what might possibly go wrong. Okay, you know, maybe a teacher might lose their temper and shoot a student or, or maybe a teacher might leave a gun someplace and the student might get and do something wrong with it. Are those possible? Yeah, sure, that's possible. But with all these schools over all these years, you would think you could point to one case where those types of things have happened and they can't do that. And you know, at some point, rather than just saying what might possibly happen, let's look to see what actually happens to on these things and get by the emotional argument that you point out.
- [32:55]
C
If you made it this far into the show, it means I must be doing something right. Key Beyond Liberty is just one of the amazing products we created. Free the people. We tell emotionally compelling stories and produce educational videos for the Liberty Curious. Our award winning documentaries personalize all things liberty, independence, creativity, hard work, integrity and perseverance. After the show, check out our work@freethepeople.org and if you like what you see, donate to support what we do. That's freethepeople.org now back to the show.
- [33:32]
A
It's a nice segue to the Biden administration memo. I did a series, ongoing series called the COVID up and one of those episodes was about the censorship industrial complex under COVID lockdowns. Matt Taibbi was talking about all of this apparatus and he's a real hero.
- [33:54]
B
For all the stuff that he's put up with and blowback he's gotten from people who would have previously been his kind of friends and stuff like that.
- [34:01]
A
Yeah, it turns out that speaking truth to power can be quite uncomfortable. But when you look at the all of these federal agencies that were jawboning Twitter and Facebook and Google and all of that, you know, the, the perception would have been it's public health agencies making sure that there's not misinformation about, about vaccines. But it wasn't. It was homeland Security, it was FBI. And this apparatus is not about one issue, it's not about one thing. And so I got to believe that the same people that were censoring guys like Jay Bhattacharya on questioning the official Covid narrative are out there suppressing your content, suppressing anybody that questions the official narrative on gun control. Because it strikes me that the government wants our guns. They're going to do everything they can and they're going to drive that narrative. Do you think it's purposeful or is this just ignorance?
- [35:10]
B
Well, just before I even get into that, just one thing you brought up and that is just the public health people. I mean, to me, a lot of the public health people were involved in the censoring that was there. And I guess I kind of hope people realize that just because public health people are deeply involved in the gun control debate. You basically have three different types of researchers who do research on guns. You have criminologists and economists, and they're generally very skeptical of gun control. We did a massive survey, the largest survey that's been done on academics who published peer reviewed empirical research on guns and economists who criminologists agreed that the most important things for reducing either murders or mass public shootings was to get rid of gun free zones. Public health people, on the other hand, are more relatively more sympathetic towards gun control and kind of listed getting rid of gun free zones as kind of the last thing that's there. They, they have a very different view on kind of empirical work. So if you look at a public health study, they'll concentrate on things like firearm homicides or firearm suicides. Whereas economists and criminologists, we may look at those things, but we'll also look at what's happening to total suicides or what's happening to total murders that are there, you know, a lot of. So you look at something like suicides. There are lots of places that have banned either all guns or all handguns. You may see drops in firearm suicides. But total suicides don't change, you know, to me the question is if you care about suicides, you know, and it's kind of ironic because a lot of the liberals support people's right to commit suicide but, but they don't accept you how you do it, you know, in that case, you know, it seems to me the total is much more important if you're looking in homicides. What most people don't realize is that homicides and murders are not the same. Homicides are murders, places plus justifiable homicides. Why you want to kind of lump in justifiable homicides in with murders isn't obvious to me. If I have a law that goes and in fact we just saw a piece in the Wall Street Journal that came out that was all upset that the number of justifiable homicides had increased after stand your ground laws had gotten passed, murders fell in those states. And so, you know, if I have justifiable homicides going up and murders going down, that seems like a good thing to me as opposed to the reverse happening. Or you know, I could have. If justifiable homicides go up by enough, by more, the murders go down. So total homicides go up that just because total homicides went up, that doesn't seem obviously bad. And why you only concentrate on firearm homicides also doesn't seem any more logical to me than looking at just firearm suicides, The government in terms of censorship. What I know they'll do things like they had operation choke point point under Obama. And so if you were in certain energy businesses or in firearms businesses, they would make it so that you couldn't, you were debanked. You also have things like the zero tolerance policy under the Biden administration where if you made One paperwork mistake, no matter how trivial, no matter how inconsequential, over like the last 18 or 19 years, you know, you transpose two letters in a county name that's there, they would take away your license to be able to be a firearms dealer. You know, my joke was, you know, maybe we should apply that to government agencies. If there's a government agency that makes a typo in any paperwork form, then we should shut it down.
- [39:53]
A
You know, people would think I would support that.
- [39:56]
B
Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't think it would be a tough sell for you, which is one reason why I brought it up. But the, but it's, but, you know, would there be a government agency left if we had that type of thing?
- [40:08]
A
It'd be 100%.
- [40:09]
B
Yeah. And you know, even if you just did over the last six months or let alone last 18 or 19 years, and you know, there were cases that had come up under the Obama administration where the Obama administration said, look, this is a trivial typo, it makes no difference. We already had the information someplace else. And they gave him a small fine and, and they closed the case. And the, the Biden administration had looked over the intervening 17 years or so, couldn't find anything and so reopened the case that the Obama administration had closed and, and took away the license. And so, yeah, I mean, you have censorship in broad sense in many ways. You know, just putting people out of business that they don't like. And it's not like you're going to instantly have gun stores spring up to go and replace them because, you know, a lot of them, even if they think this is okay right now, they look a few years down the road. What happens if the Democrats get back in there and reinstitute these things? Obama had Operation Choke Point that was there and Trump, as soon as he got into office, got rid of it. Biden reinstituted it, kind of put it on steroids and you know, Trump has gotten rid of it again. But, you know, can you make a business go without having a bank being able to go and take the credit cards of your customers or cash checks for you from your customers or have your own checks? Yeah, you can have workarounds there, but they're more costly.
- [42:00]
A
So this, this gets directly to this piece where we started our conversation in April. And Matt Taibbi points out that the United States, because we have the First Amendment, is kind of the last man standing, particularly in the English speaking world, the so called five eyes countries that defends free speech generally. But this Biden administration memo that Tulsi put out unredacted in April. Sounds exactly like what say the Digital Services act is in the uk. In the EU or in the uk. I just had a guest on from the UK and she was talking about non criminal speech that was being targeted by the UK government. The cops will show up at your house for something that you, you said was not even a criminal activity. And that's. That same language is in the Biden memo. Like they're, they're, they're now looking at targeting people because of things like the Gadsden flag.
- [43:12]
B
Yeah, right.
- [43:12]
A
They're looking at targeting people based on, you know, if I talk about liberty too much, is that, is that going to, am I going to end up on a list because I like liberty? Is that a trigger word?
- [43:24]
B
Right. No. I mean, I guess in the UK, I was hearing something recently. There are like 12,000 people a year who are being arrested. And even if you're not arrested, you have the police come up to your door and they want to talk to you about the stuff that you've been putting on social media or whatever. I mean, you talk about a chilling effect that's there. Even if you don't get arrested, do you really want to risk being arrested? You know, you had this guy from Ireland who I guess had written some comedy shows or whatever and went through an airport in the uk, had Graham Linehan, Right. And he has five armed officers come and, and arrest him when he's there. You know, it's just crazy stuff. And, you know, Canada, Australia, other countries have had these things to varying degrees. I was just reading Germany. There was this young woman who was kind of pushing back on some of the green energy stuff that was there. And Elon Musk retweeted her request to get asylum in the United States because she was afraid that since she was questioning the green energy stuff of all things, just even debating those types of things, she was worried that if she went back, she was going to be imprisoned. And so I don't, you know, if we hadn't had won this election, it would have, we would have done that. Plus, Trump is trying to push back on things like the EU regulations that you're talking about there. He's been telling the British government, because the British. It's one thing for Britain to target its own citizens or eu, but they're trying to use their control over, you know, posts that are seen by people in their own countries to control what is posted in the United. By Americans in the United States. And, you know, so J.D. vance and Trump are pushing back on those things, but obviously, the Biden administration not only wouldn't have pushed back, but they would have been, or the Kamala Harris administration. I'm just concerned about what happens in the future on these things. We have this mayor's, this governor's race in New Jersey, and the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. When it came to, you know, what schools could teach and things like sexual orientation or trans, she was basically saying parents have no right to kind of have their children opt out of those types of things. And, you know, that it was for their own good, that they basically be taught, you know, these things that the government.
- [46:18]
A
And if they go to a school board meeting and complain about it, well.
- [46:21]
B
Then they have their license plate numbers written down by the FBI under the Biden administration. You know, that's one thing. Under Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, they're actually having the FBI go after real criminals on these things. You know, moving a lot of the law enforcement out of D.C. to the rest of the country where the crime's actually occurring. You know, they're not trying to infiltrate Catholic groups that, you know, support the Latin Mass or something like that.
- [47:00]
A
So what's your. Let's talk about some Trump administration policies. We're coming short on time, so let's get through two or three pretty quickly. And you've written a lot about the Trump administration bringing in the national guard in D.C. what, what is your take on how successful that was, and is it still happening or it was a limited project?
- [47:29]
B
Well, I think it was extremely successful. Look, to me, crime isn't rocket science. If you want to reduce crime, you have to make it riskier for criminals to commit crime. Things like higher arrest rates, higher conviction rates, longer prison sentences, and allowing victims to. To be able to defend themselves all makes it riskier for criminals to commit crime. And the Trump administration has tried to deal with all those things. In the case of DC and things like concealed carry permits, it was taking six to eight months at least to go and get a concealed carry permit. The Trump administration basically indicated that they were going to do things to D.C. if they didn't speed up the process. And so now it takes like two weeks to get it. You know, they put more. They put FBI and DEA and ATF agents on the street as well as the National Guard. They effectively doubled the number of boots on the ground. At any point in time during the time when they had the federalization that was there have a lot more police on the street. It's not too surprising. You're going to have more arrests. They had a big increase the number of arrests. And as far as convictions go, you know, you look at one thing people don't know is that in D.C. is different from any other place in that the U.S. attorney in D.C. is responsible for prosecuting crimes by adults, okay? The District is responsible for prosecuting crimes by juveniles. The U.S. attorney under the Biden administration in 2022, for example, refused to prosecute about 2/3 of the arrests that had occurred. Even in 2023, he refused to prosecute like, 56% of the arrests that had occurred. You know, not only are you letting the criminals off there, but you're also discouraging the police to go and arrest people if they, you know, why should they risk their safety to go and arrest somebody? If the person's going to be immediately released, that's there and nothing's going to happen to him. Judge Jean Pirro is much more serious about this. And you see this in terms of just how D.C. still, even to today, handles the juvenile crime. That's there. You had this guy nicknamed Big Balls, who, in trying to protect this woman, was attacked viciously. The pictures are pretty horrific of the attack. It was just in Dupont Circle, which is a nice area. There are 10 juveniles that savagely beat him up. The ones that were arrested weren't even held. They were immediately released on kind of home detention that was there. And then they served no time. They basically when the judge, because they were handled in a juvenile court, they basically are given probation. That's there. These are individuals that have gone out and committed other crimes since then. And, you know, so one of the most bizarre things to me is you have people like Governor Westmore in Maryland and other Democrats going and claiming that Trump doing this in D.C. was racist. Over 90% of the murder victims in D.C. are black. Okay? At least for data up through 2021, the most recent data that I've seen there. The District is overwhelmingly black, okay? The areas where the crime's occurring is particularly in the areas where it's most heavily black. Who do you think owns many of these stores that close down? Who do you think works in those stores? Who do you think shops in those stores? Who do you think owns homes in those areas whose property values are depressed because of the higher crime? You know, they say that they care about blacks, but, you know, what they end up doing is they care about black criminals. You know, so you'll have this kind of racial equity and justice where the percent of. Of criminals that go to prison should be equal to their share of the racial group that's there in the area? Well, you know, if you make it less costly for them to go and commit crimes, they're going to commit crimes against people who have similar race and social, economic characteristics themselves, because people tend to commit crimes for people who live near them. And, you know, so, you know, to me, the question is, who do you care about? Do you care about black victims or do you care about the black criminals that are there? And who do you want to make life easier for in there? And it's much more than just the direct victims of crime. People are harmed in many different ways.
- [52:27]
A
So the final question on the Trump administration, President Trump, his record on gun control, he's not by any means 100%, in my mind, but just this administration, the second Trump administration, what are the wins and the losses in terms of what they've done on protecting gun rights? Right.
- [52:52]
B
So I think one thing people, when they're critical of it, is they, you know, you have a lot of lawyers in the Department of Justice. And to go and have the administrative people, it's kind of like drinking out of a fire hose right now, particularly with all the lawsuits and everything that are being brought across the country right there. And so not all the civil service lawyers there are kind of on board with the way you and I would think about things. And so they make what you and I would regard as kind of mistakes in terms of the arguments that are there. What I try to look at right now, because, you know, things that they can't control, realistically. You know, there's. People only have so many hours in the day to go and monitor everything that's going to be done. And I look at somebody like Harmony Dylan, she's done amazing stuff. You know, she's brought a lawsuit against Los Angeles county because they are delaying giving out permits to people. She went to the Seventh Circuit herself, which is kind of almost unprecedented for somebody, assistant attorney general, to go to a circuit court to go and argue a case on assault weapons ban that's there and kind of put the force there. The other thing that I don't think they're getting credit for is just the impact of the judge, judicial appointments that they're making. So one of the reasons, or I think the reason probably maybe the only reason, that the Supreme Court hasn't taken up an assault weapons ban case is because there hasn't been circuit splits that have been there. And that's kind of been a rule that they want to make sure that there's disagreements between the circuits before they go and bring it up. And the problem that you've had is that the states that pass the strict example gun control law have been in circuits that have been controlled by the Democrats. So even if you get, let's say a good decision by a three judge panel on something like the ninth Circuit that's there, then Democrats who support the laws will immediately call for an en banc hearing because they control the majority of judges on the third Circuit, ninth Circuit and get it reversed. And so what's happened now is that the third Circuit, because of Trump's appointments, has flipped control. It's gone from Democratic control to Republican control. And just a couple weeks ago, they heard oral arguments on banc for New Jersey assault weapons ban case. Listening to that, it's pretty clear to me that even the Democrats on the panel knew that they were going to lose because their questions were like, well, what they call standing, should we even be hearing this case? Rather than kind of getting into the Second Amendment issues on that. And so, you know, not only has Trump made it so that you have pretty good justices on the Supreme Court with regard to these issues, you know, Roberts is, you can't really blame Trump for Roberts being there. But, but he's made it. So cases now are going to be able to get to the Supreme Court on these things. You know, there have been some things like, you know, a lot of the gun groups get out said about this case out of the 5th Circuit where it looked the judge originally made a ruling saying that the Second Amendment foundation and other another gun group had to go and give a list of all their members. Because often when you make a decision, the question who does it apply to? And often in part because it's premature, court's been cracking down on them. Want to limit it to those who are actual parties involved with the case that they're hearing right now. Well, the judge kind of did that on his own. Okay. It was a mistake. And the Trump administration has filed a brief saying you've made a mistake on this. You shouldn't be asking for essentially a list of all the members there, you know, creating kind of a registration list that's there. But, you know, I was just seeing an email, even though this was weeks ago, corrected. I just got an email this morning from Gun Owners of America going and attacking the Trump administration for this stupid decision that the judge made. And you know, so I think, you know, these are people that I'm from friendly with and whatever. So, but I'm not trying to Be super critical. But it's just what I worry to some extent. And there are particular groups like nagar national association for Gun Rights who I think, look, I depend on donations for my center, okay, when, when Trump wins in 1990, in 2016 or 2024 and Republicans control the House and the Senate, people think everything's taken care of, they don't need to fight anymore. And so donations go down a lot. And so I can understand why people want to kind of rev up their base saying, you know, we're the ones that are still fighting for this type of thing. I just, I guess I just draw the line on things like that where I just say, you know, I can understand the short run gains from doing that, but why make up these types of concerns?
- [58:40]
A
That's a nice segue for you to tell us about your organization. Should someone choose to donate. How do they find the center's work?
- [58:50]
B
Well, we're basically a group of academics. I've been an academic most of my life. I've had positions at Stanford, University of Chicago, the Wharton business school, Yale, UCLA, Rice. As mentioned, I was chief economist for the U.S. sentencing Commission and most recently senior advisor for research and statistics at the Department of Justice. We have people from the University of Chicago, Harvard, Wharton, University of Michigan, other places on our academic boards that we have. Our research director is professor at Wayman Mary and economics and statistics. So we try to do academic quality research and then go and make it accessible for people to go and write up op EDS or appear on shows like yours to talk about these things. And you know, it just, people can see the work that we do. Go to our website@crimeresearch.org, crimeresearch.org and you know, we have a small budget, we only have about five people that are there, but I think, you know, we produce, you know, a lot of stuff there, both peer reviewed publications and putting out op EDS and other things. And you're back on X. I'm back on X.
- [60:20]
A
Free at last.
- [60:21]
B
Yeah, well, I eventually, after I don't know, six months or something, I just said, you know, this is crazy. I didn't apologize but I took down the original post that was there because I just didn't think I had an option.
- [60:36]
A
Yeah, well, did you put it back up when?
- [60:39]
B
I don't know, maybe I should go back and do that.
- [60:41]
A
Just stress test the system.
- [60:43]
B
Right. Yeah. I personally. Sure it would be okay now?
- [60:46]
A
Yeah, you would hope so.
- [60:47]
B
I'm sure. I've put out plenty of other things that are at least as controversial.
- [60:51]
A
Yeah.
- [60:51]
B
So. But I appreciate that.
- [60:53]
A
Well, let's. As a last shameless plug for free the people, we have a brand new mug out called Thomas Massey is my spirit animal in homage to his cattle farming. And so cheers to Thomas and Carolyn.
- [61:10]
B
Yeah. No, it was great being at the wedding, and it's great seeing him. And I have to say, I've known Thomas for a while, and he was glowing. I mean, it was just. You could just see he was just so much more relaxed and happy than I've seen him be in a while. So, I mean, after his wife died, I guess in the middle of last year, it was really rough. I mean, he had his congressional duties and he had a ranch, you know, with cattle and things like that. His wife had pretty much been running and supervising it and stuff. And, you know, he had to go back and sell his animals that were there and. And try to, you know, basically took off. I don't know, it was like five or six weeks from Congress. But I, you know, it just. Anyways, I was just so happy to see, you know, it's a guy who fights all sorts of battles for everybody, and, you know, all the stuff he's had to go through has just been sad.
- [62:15]
A
Yeah, he's a tough guy, but he's very happy right now.
- [62:19]
B
Yeah.
- [62:19]
A
Okay. Thank you, John.
- [62:20]
B
Oh, thank you.
- [62:23]
C
Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications. And if you want to know more about free the people, go to freethepeople.org.